Tags

Video: Fruits of Rural Empowerment

March 14, 2014

Margaret Kungu – a mother, mango farmer and cooperative leader in Sagana, Kenya – is fondly known as Mama Njeri in her community. Working with TechnoServe and Coca-Cola, Mama Njeri received training in better farming practices that helped her increase her mango yields despite dry conditions.

“Mama Njeri’s farm, it has been a motivation to many farmers,” says TechnoServe senior business advisor Isaiah Kirema. “She is able to train them and actually show them that it can be done.”

Project Nurture, a partnership with The Coca-Cola Company, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and TechnoServe, is helping to seed this type of rural empowerment across Kenya and Uganda. The four-year program aims to help more than 50,000 small-scale fruit farmers, 30 percent of whom are women, double their incomes.

As a participant in Project Nurture, Mama Njeri is one of 5 million women entrepreneurs Coca-Cola aims to empower by 2020 through its 5by20 program. Learn more about Mama Njeri and other women who are overcoming barriers to succeed in business.

Unable to find employment in his community, Francis Kihara ended up in prison. Watch our video to see how the STRYDE program helped him learn the confidence and skills he needed to start a new business and rebuild his life.